The conniving Gray Davis
By Roger F. Gay
web posted October 7, 2002
It's the most obvious fault in the huge pork-barrel child support
enforcement system; men who are not fathers of the children they
have been ordered to support. The California legislature passed
a bill that would have allowed men to dispute paternity with a
DNA test, but Governor Gray Davis vetoed it.
The news was
reported first at Men's News Daily on September 29, but I
cannot get over the feeling that not enough has been said about
it. What forces can possibly be sufficient to maintain such an
overwhelming level of corruption after it has been so obviously
exposed?
It's only money.
The point of forcing these men to pay through the government
system is to increase the amount of money flowing through the
government system. States are paid a bonus based on the
amount of child support paid through their system. The more
money that flows through, the more money states receive in
federal funding. Davis claims that $40
million is at stake. At the federal bonus payment level of 6
percent, he is apparently claiming that hundreds of thousands of
men have been subjected to paternity fraud in California who are
now being forced to pay $667 million per year to support
children that are not theirs. If it must be about money lost, then
the men win. They are losing more.
I cannot confirm those figures but there does seem to be some
reason to believe that the problem is quite large. Dianna
Thompson, Executive Director of the American Coalition For
Fathers and Children has reported that almost 80% of the
paternity judgments in Los Angeles County in 2000 were
assigned by default. Statewide that would amount to a lot of
default judgments. And the practice is not new. The designated
father rule has been in effect for years.
“I recognize that paternity fraud is a serious issue and has the
potential of damaging an individual’s livelihood,” Davis wrote in a
veto message. Has the potential of damaging an individual's
livelihood? You can send email to me, dear readers, if you think
I'm wrong; but isn't that statement more than conniving and less
than clever?
We're talking about the state forcing men to pay enormous sums
to support children that are not theirs. We are not talking about
taxes paid by everyone according to their means to provide
public support. Individual men are wrongly named fathers and
forced to support individual children that are not theirs, against
their will and in the face of their protests. That does cause
damage to them. It isn't vague or probabilistic. It's an improper
use of government force to do something that is wrong and that
does cause enormous harm to individuals.
It causes enormous damage to the United States and its citizens
overall. If government can get away with such flagrant abuses of
power, then no citizen is safe. Our lives and our fortunes,
whatever they may be, are subject to the whims of those who
have decided to become despots.
According to Davis, the corrective legislation was "flawed in its
attempt to address the issue.” Let's examine the particulars as
expressed by some of the special interests Davis accommodated
The National Organization for Women and the Oakland-based
National Center for Youth Law complained that men who had
already been ordered to pay child support through a default
judgment would have been able to challenge paternity with a
DNA test. In other words, it would cheat women out of the right
to steal money from men they had defrauded.
Lupe Alonzo-Diaz, senior policy advocate for the San Diego-
based "Children’s Advocacy Institute" complained that the bill
did not provide money for the child’s food, school supplies and
other needs while proof of paternity was pending. That is pretty
far off target. The problem starts when a woman has a child out-
of-wedlock and has difficulty establishing who the father is. If she
cannot pay for food and school supplies, she goes to the welfare
office. Forcing a particular guy to pay without knowing whether
he is the father, having no proof that he is the father, is way
beyond the scope of reasonable behavior. Taxpayers – your
desire not to support children that are not yours is not as great as
the man the state is forcing to carry the burden alone.
She adds, a man could claim he is not a biological parent, and
then a test could conclude he is the father. Yes it could. Then
you get the money from him.
And the kicker: "parenthood is more than just DNA," she said.
Yes it is. And parenthood has nothing to do with the state forcing
men at random to pay money to women who have children
outside of stable relationships who then have difficulty
establishing who the father is. Being forced to pay does not
establish parenthood.
Somebody had to say that it's for the children. “We agree there
are paternity fraud issues and that the system is not working 100
percent,” Lupe Alonzo-Diaz said, “but we’re glad that the
governor put children first.”
No he didn't. He put $40 million in federal funding first, before
fundamental human rights that once defined the United States of
America.
But I have an even greater and more important corruption to
complain about. In the fifteen
years that the designated father rule has been in effect, the
courts have not put a stop to it. The judicial branch is most
directly responsible for upholding the constitution and assuring
that our fundamental individual rights are upheld. If you really
want to feel a shiver run up your spine, consider the fact that they
have refused to fulfill their obligation.
Roger F. Gay is a professional analyst and director of Project for
the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology. Other
articles by Roger F. Gay can be found in the Men's News Daily
archive.
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